Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  She wrinkled her nose. “What is it? It tastes disgusting.”

  “That is not important.” His voice was a whisper, very far away. She looked up. He was standing beside her. He was also across the glade against the line of diminutive trees, mere shrubs. She knew at the same time these were oaks hundreds of years old, and with that thought a feeling of immense age swept over her, racing along with the clouds that whipped overhead. The trees grew and shrank and undulated, but Raimond remained motionless amid all this astounding speed of change.

  As the trees grew and died and shrank and grew again she rose slowly to her feet and with great care began to remove her clothes. This was important, this removal of all barrier, all inhibition, all artifice. She needed to feel the wind of this change on her skin. If she could have removed the skin itself she would have done so then.

  Animals came into the glade. Some paused, looked at her, nibbled at the leaf debris, and wandered out. She recognized deer, a bear, an enormous bull. Birds of prey circled overhead while the forest stuttered through seasons, generations, eons. She saw the rhinoceros and the fox.

  And still Raimond Foix stood close to her and far away. She could reach out and touch him. Almost. Her arm extended. Her hand reached toward him. He remained just beyond her fingertips.

  Suddenly she sat down, crossed her ankles, and looked up. The sun raced across the sky, flickering night and day until they blurred together and the light steadied into a crepuscular gray-blue.

  The ground under was turning in a ponderous circle and she struggled to keep her bearings. She kept her eyes on Raimond. He was her anchor. Without him she would whirl away. The ground was flowing in a spiral under her feet, gaining speed.

  There was no coherent story in what happened. Objects around her blurred or leaped into sharp focus. A dragonfly hovered in front of her, staring with its enormous compound lenses. It knew her. She wanted to cry.

  An ocean broke against vast silver cliffs. A blood sun hung enormous above a canyon. A puddle teeming with life dried swiftly and the mud cracked. Wind blew away the dust. Animals shriveled, leaving bones poking through leather skin stretched taut.

  She shook her head and sent her hair whirling, and in that moment Raimond Foix took her picture. A wave of sickness passed into her, descended to her core, twisted hard. She fell over, retching. She tried to cry out but had no voice. The trees loomed over her, toppling; they would crush her. She was suffocating, struggling for breath, pawing at a darkness gathering around her onto her, into her.

  A cavernous space she knew was enclosed though she could not see the walls echoed with thick, muffled sounds, water sounds, incoherent shouts, the sizzle of what she thought must be electricity.

  Nothing frightened her as much as this. There were people, people she didn’t know, and as they crowded closer they began to pull at her skin, to pluck pieces away.

  The pain came in endless waves, over and over. Then she was standing on a hillside looking down at a Greek theater. She knew this place. She had been there before. She would be there again. She smiled. The smile felt weak and thin.

  “You’re all right now,” Raimond said.

  “I’m naked.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And a good thing, too. You were throwing up for a long while. I began to worry.”

  She was dressing slowly, as if he was her doctor. “You, worry?”

  “Very funny. What did you learn?”

  She paused. “Learn? Oh, that was a test, was it?” She shook her head, and her heavy blond mane spiraled around her face.

  He smiled, handing her the light jacket she had worn.

  The trees had stopped growing and shrinking. The sun was fixed in the sky.

  And the light still slanted down from the right. She pulled the chair closer to the desk and set the photograph squarely on the leather inset. She cupped her chin in her hands.

  What had she learned?

  A large, dark place, enclosed, filled with shadows and fear. That was their destination.

  She had begun to sing Dowland’s In Darkness Let Me Dwell. The high, pure melody flowed: “In darkness let me dwell, the ground shall sorrow be…,”

  She didn’t notice at first that her voice was lingering over the pulsing melody, catching for the repetitions, the meaning of the words. She turned inward, aware now of the lyrics:

  “The walls of marble black that moisten’d still shall weep,

  My music hellish jarring sounds, to banish friendly sleep.”

  A Pythia had to know music, to feel it. Music came before language; it was the soil from which awareness could grow and flourish. She could see clearly: Raimond Foix had chosen her in part because he knew she could stand behind him, hand on his shoulder, and sing to his accompaniment on the harpsichord.

  This is what she had learned: first, the drug Raimond had given her that afternoon in the Forest of Tronçais opened her to the future and the past. She could see time, sometimes in grand sweep, sometimes in minute detail. That afternoon she had had no control over what she saw, it swept over her and she nearly drowned. Second, she had no further need for the drug.

  This substance, (she thought, this sacrament) was described in great detail in the Founding Document. The recipe was a combination of extracts from three widely dispersed plants. Its antiquity suggested it must have been discovered in the times of mist and ice before history began.

  The priests of Apollo at Delphi knew of it, and for some time the Pythia took it, and so could see. It appeared before that in the Fertile Crescent where the Sumerians and Akkadians discussed it. The Israelites knew it as an oil they applied to the bodies of the kings and prophets so they could have visions of what was to come. Jesus had used it, and had given it to his disciples.

  Gradually though the unguent, the oil, the medicine, the sacred balm, lost its power. The ingredients were hard to find, harder to distill and fiercely difficult to combine. The early Christians used a diluted form, and even that degenerate and partial substance enflamed the lords of the Church, for it was powerful enough to make anyone who took it into a god.

  For on that far-off afternoon she, Lisa Sybilla Emmer, had been divine and had merged completely with all time and space.

  She put the photograph back in the drawer. She closed it and shook her head as if to clear it. Her hair was shorter now and did not spiral. She was solidly in her present.

  “There’s no other way to describe it,” she murmured. She was talking to Raimond, or to his presence in this room, or to his memory. “I saw all time and space. I was a god. Now I am not a god, yet though my vision is partial and obscured, I see what comes. The walls of marble black that moisten’d still shall weep.”

  She stood and pushed the chair carefully against the desk. The broad leather inset was empty, a dark green plain. “It’s time to go. No friendly sleep until this war is over.”

  52.

  Low sun through intermittent trees along the river made Lisa’s face flicker like an old movie. The effect stopped when the river turned more westerly and the sun was directly in her face. She turned away from the river and drove through empty fields either just turning green or thick with blue flax flowers. They might have been a couple on holiday, out for a country drive.

  “Not to worry.” Steve clasped his hands behind his head and stretched. “I’m with you.”

  Lisa glanced at his side with concern, but there was no blood; the bandage seemed to be holding.

  “I still don’t like it,” she muttered. “You’re injured. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “Alain’s there, at the abbey,” Steve said, ignoring her concerns. “We heard him. He works for me, for you. We’ll get him back.”

  They swept through a small village, no stops. On the far side the road narrowed and wound through open fields. There were no other cars. They were alone.

  The light was failing when she pulled behind a small grove of trees and parked. The engine hummed quietly. She shut it off and opened the door. A blast
of hot air hit them. A moment later they stood side by side, looking through the trees at the ruins of an abbey and a low town across the river.

  “They’re watching for us,” she said.

  “I would be. Does it matter?”

  “Not really, I’m just curious. This is it.”

  “How does it feel?”

  Her laughter was tight and short. “Uncertain. Momentous.”

  “Some Pythia,” he murmured in mock pity, touching her cheek.

  She started to push his hand away, but clasped it instead, fingers laced through his. “They won’t understand, will they? They think the Delphi Agenda predicts the future. That’s not the way it works, not at all. The Pythia sees the future, sees all the possible paths.” She turned to him. “Listen, Steve, this is important. You must hear me. I know why the Church has been afraid all these years, why the Order exists, why they have been so implacable in fighting this war, and why they kept it secret even from the people who fight on their side.”

  He waited calmly for her to continue.

  She did.

  “It goes back a long way, Steve, before the Delphic Oracle, before the Old Testament. It’s as ancient as mankind. It’s a secret in plain sight. Our ancestors wandering the forests of old Europe, and before them throughout Africa, in Asia, Australia, everywhere, knew it. There are people who can see, always have been. Gradually, as we gathered into cities, built states and empires, we lost the truth. It became a dangerous technology to those with power, then a dangerous idea. A heresy. In the Middle East it was called the Messiah Medicine, an oil or unguent the initiated spread on their bodies. It gave them the gift if they were open to it. Moses knew about it. The kings of Israel, the early Christians, they still had it in diluted form.”

  “Drugs?” Steve asked.

  She shook her head. “A substance, certainly, something that facilitated transformation. But the ability is in everyone. Raimond taught me using drugs once. I had to go back there this afternoon. Now I know. The Messiah Medicine, the unguent, whatever form it took didn’t matter. What matters is what it shows. The future in all its crazy and terrifying reality.”

  She took his hand between hers. “A Pythia, or a Pythos…. Anyone can be one. It just means letting go, letting the truth in. And the truth is, that when a person truly sees, that person becomes a god.”

  “Are you saying…?”

  “What if everyone could see the future? The Church would cease to exist. All that truth would change the way people think and act. The Church, all churches, would cease to exist. They would no longer have a monopoly on truth. Of course they have tried to destroy us. We are their worst enemy. They offer consolation in return for faith. We offer a path to ecstasy, to true understanding. With that, the world would change forever.” She paused. “The world will change forever. We are going to give this gift to the world. It is that the Order of Theodosius has been fighting to prevent, that has driven the Delphi Agenda under ground, blocked it every chance it had, prevented Bruno from releasing it. It is the same thinking that killed Hypatia even though she wasn’t a Pythia. She knew we lived in a world of complexity. The priest of Apollo knew it and said so. Complexity means that the world and its systems are non-linear and unpredictable. This does not mean it’s random or chaotic, it means that it is surprising. The world is ready for a surprise, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “It sounds dangerous.”

  She tried a laugh, but it had no force and quickly died. “Of course it’s dangerous. The Order knows this, and tries to prevent it. Listen, Steve, listen carefully. The Oracle at Delphi, the actual Pythia, was always a woman, over fifty. She was celibate. She went into trance and babbled. The priest interpreted the babbling in perfect hexameters. ‘Trust the wooden walls.’ ‘Cross the river and a great empire will be destroyed.’ The oracles are always ambiguous; they have to be. If you believe an oracle and act on it, you change the future. When you do that, your prediction is false. If you don’t act, disaster overtakes you. Everything is contingent, uncertain. Even when a Pythia knew prediction was impossible because knowing the future changes it, a combination of insight, intuition and knowledge could set certain things in motion. The Oracle was successful because partial as their methods were, they worked out often enough to be useful. Colonies were founded, people recovered from diseases or formed successful alliances because of what the Oracle told them.”

  “So we’re in the dark, like everyone else? The Pythos, the Pythia, is a fraud, it’s all flimflam, like the Wizard of Oz?”

  After a long silence she said, “No. The Founding Document is the beginning of a centuries-long experiment, an attempt to recover and improve on what shamans have always done, even if dimly, as through a veil, or in a mirror, darkly. We can gain insight, to see in, and thus to see out, but to do that we have to destroy what we are, or think we are. First, they took something from Thomas, though it’s as likely Thomas took it from them: ‘Make male and female into one.’ For hundreds of years only mature women could be a Pythia. Being a Pythia is a state of mind, and to be truly effective it must transcend gender, culture, and context. It requires a detached point of view at a very high level. The Pythia could never have a family, a lover.”

  Steve regarded her solemnly. “Are you telling me they bred people for the role?”

  She touched him on the cheek. “It wasn’t quite like that, but remember the Camondo Stair, the double helix? They were looking at genetic lines. There have always been people who find it easier to enter trance in order to see what is hidden.”

  “A hundred years before the discovery of DNA?” He was skeptical.

  She spread her hands. “There it is. They may have been breeding people, too, but they were certainly searching for the right genetic profiles. After the high priest of Apollo met with Hypatia they formalized the search. Records go back sixteen hundred years. We’ll have Ted and Marianne check. If they’ve been doing this since before Hypatia was killed, there must be an incredible database by now.”

  “So Raimond Foix was looking for you? He knew you were the one?”

  “I don’t know if I was the one. There must be others. I believe Sister Teresa was one, and knew it. I think she hated Raimond because he didn’t choose her. And he knew all about me long before we met. The Delphi Agenda organization is global, they knew the genetic lines, so they watched, they judged. Bruno had it; so did Raimond. It was nonsense, all that mythology about the Pythia having to be a virgin: Bruno loved a wench when he could get one. That’s all window dressing, like the Vestal Virgins, who now that I think about it may have been part of the Delphi Agenda.”

  “But you’re a woman, Lisa, not some kind of hermaphrodite. What’s this about making male and female into one?”

  “Being able to see – no, to feel – both sides. Many systems of thought divide the world in two parts. The I Ching: yang and yin, odd and even, right and left, masculine and feminine, light and dark. There’s a bias built into the very nature of the lists. We begin with light, for instance, and so assert its primacy over darkness. Or right, which curiously enough is located on the left side when we read the list, at least in western scripts. But the universe knows no such biases. All exists, all is one. The Pythia must be able to see that way. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “My fugue states are part of the solution. They allow me to see alternative experiences, points of view, all at the same time. It’s one of the ways of making male and female into one.”

  “All right. How does this all relate to the future?

  “Prudence,” she said. “Memory, intelligence, and foresight. I keep saying it, because it’s in the documents, in everything Raimond left for me. First, I have to trust myself. I can see the future. With prudence I can see the outlines of what I need to do. This,” she paused, “art requires a very broad and long view of the future. It means seeing humanity as a flow, a complex dynamic system of billions of particles, interactin
g with the earth, the solar system, the entire universe. I can’t say with certainty what will happen tonight. I can say that in spite of that we have to go, for Alain, for the Delphi Agenda, for us. We have to release the Messiah in everyone and for that to happen, the Order must disappear.”

  “I just hope you don’t end up like Bruno.”

  “Bruno saw what was coming. He knew what had to happen, and he told us. The human world will disappear unless we act.”

  She held onto his hand and lapsed into silence.

  Shadows had gathered under the trees when she asked, “How long?”

  He looked at his watch. “Soon.”

  She climbed in the passenger seat. He slid behind the wheel and she took his hand again. They sat side by side, staring through the trees at the dark ruin in silence. Once he started to hum a tune and stopped abruptly. He looked at her.

  She had closed her eyes. Her head, tilted back, was completely relaxed. The worry lines in her brow and tight lines at the corner of her mouth were gone. He saw her as she must have been at seventeen, when Raimond Foix first approached her.

  There was in her face such innocence. She was a budding scholar about to devote her life to something small and safe. Raimond had seen then something she couldn’t have seen herself, that she was going to be the Pythia. Did he already know she would be his successor, and that the great confrontation between two traditions would occur in this peaceful French countryside?

  Her hand fell open, releasing his. He suddenly realized that what he felt toward her was envy.

  A small, nondescript car motored past well under the speed limit. The driver waved out the window. His hand seemed to stir the turgid air.

  Marianne was in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. She wore a bonnet. She and Ted could be farmers returning from market. They most certainly were not a pair of librarians working for the Delphic Oracle. He drove slowly because of the heat.

  Steve saluted. Ted raised his thumb. The car vanished behind a grove of plane trees. Steve watched the road beyond the trees, but the car did not reappear. It would be hidden now, out of sight of the abbey.